Eleventy Integration
The official plugin for integrating JamComments into your Eleventy site.
Prerequisites
In order to use this plugin, you’ll need to do the following:
- Create a new JamComments account.
- Create a new site after logging into the dashboard.
- Generate an API key and store it in a safe location.
Installation
Run npm install @jam-comments/eleventy
.
Configuration
In your .eleventy.js
file, require the plugin and initialize it with your site’s domain and API key.
Environment Configuration
In non-production mode, this plugin will render a list of dummy comments on your pages, making it easier to adjust styles before deploying to production. Additionally, any new comments will be silently submitted.
In order to remove these dummy comments and allow submissions to go through, either the NODE_ENV
or JAM_COMMENTS_ENVIRONMENT
environment variables must be set to production
.
Displaying Comments
Embed the jamcomments
Nunjucks shortcode in the template that renders individual posts or pages. Note that explicitly passing the path.url
is optional. If it’s not provided, it’ll use the current path as indicated by Eleventy on build.
Overriding Copy in UI
The JamComments UI comes with its own set of basic copy for its components (submission confirmation, submit button text, etc.). However, many of these can be overridden:
Property | Where It Appears | Default |
---|---|---|
confirmationMessage | In the success banner after submitting a comment. | ”Comment successfully submitted!” |
submitButton | In the comment submission button. | ”Submit” |
namePlaceholder | In the “name” input. | (empty) |
emailPlaceholder | In the “email” input. | (empty) |
commentPlaceholder | In the comment textarea. | ”Write something in plain text or Markdown…” |
writeTab | In the tab for composing a comment. | ”Write” |
previewTab | In the tab for previewing a comment. | ”Preview” |
authButton | In the link for signing in or registering. | ”Log In or Register” |
logOutButton | In the link for logging out. | ”Log Out” |
To customize these values, use the copy
option when registering the plugin:
Automated Schema Generation
Out of the box, JamComments will automatically generate structured data (JSON-LD) for your pages, as long as a BlogPosting
or Article
entity already exists in the document. This configuration-free approach generates the data client-side with JavaScript — an approach well-supported by Google.
However, if you’d like that data to be server-rendered for more robustness, pass a JSON string or JavaScript object in your shortcode:
When schema is passed like this, the plugin will render the full object with comments into the HTML. Just remember to not render it yourself if you use this feature, as to avoid duplicate records appearing on the page.
Setting a Date Format
The default date format for comments is 'm/d/Y
. If you’re from another country, that might be weird. So, you can customize it by using the dateFormat
option:
Supported Rendering Engines
- *.njk
- *.liquid
Contributions
The source for this plugin is open to contributions. If you have a bug fix or idea for improvement, leave a pull request or issue in the GitHub repository.